Wind Across the Everglades

In the early 20th century, game warden and nature conservationist Walt Murdock (Christopher Plummer) is pitted against Cottonmouth (Burt Ives), the leader of a gang of flippant birdpoachers. With a prescient ecological message coursing through the film’s central narrative, this technicolor wonder displays the masterful use of color and nuanced approach to good versus evil paramount to so much of Ray’s ouvre—despite his untimely firing before the conclusion of production. In its rendering of a slow deterioration of traditional American ways of living, the film nods to the liberalizing forces of modernity and simultaneously attempts to scrub away the more sinister reminders of our shared history.